Posts Tagged ‘Alice’

Last time around I brought up problems related to composing for visual novels, and to an extent all games. Today I return to encourage other musicians to take the leap and join a project. I’ve also got a challenge to you composers out there, and last but not least: The premiere of my YouTube channel, with a new track from ESR.

I’ve mentioned in an earlier post that Eastern Starlight Romance runs on the Ren’Py engine, but perhaps it would be interesting to show what’s involved in coding a basic Ren’Py game. Ren’Py is a visual novel engine, based on the programming language Python. One of its strongest points is that it’s easy to make a basic visual novel with it.

Here’s a simple example. The code for a line of dialogue looks like this:

ma "Not bad, Alice. I didn't think you were that devious."

The part in quotes is the dialogue. “ma” indicates that Marisa is speaking. ma is a Character object, and it’s a shortcut so that we don’t have to type the full name “Marisa” every time Marisa speaks.

Here’s where the Character object is defined:

define ma = Character('Marisa', color="#FCEC7C")

With this code, the speaker’s name is shown as Marisa. Using Character objects, we can also customize the dialogue box based on who’s speaking. In this case, we make Marisa’s name show up as the color FCEC7C. That happens to be a shade of yellow.

That’s Graph’s new Alice and Mystia, by the way!

In the future, I may make more posts about Ren’Py. My main purpose here isn’t to advertise Ren’Py (though I do recommend trying it out); it’s to give examples of the inner workings that make a visual novel come together.

In a couple of weeks or so the beta will be ready, and at that time we’ll be taking beta testers to play the game before the public release. Yes, it’s finally time for DSD to show the fruits of its efforts.

Lastly, I’ll mention that having a dedicated CG artist would help greatly in the long run. Head over here if you’re interested.

Hi, I’m one of the writers, Wererat42. Sorry for the late introduction.

We’ve already talked a bit about our plans concerning Marisa and how we intend to characterize her, but the name of the game is Eastern Starlight Romance, so why don’t we talk a little bit about the heroines of the game? One of the most recognizable pairings in Touhou would have to be MariAli, so I’ll start with Marisa’s neighbor in the Forest, Alice Margatroid.

The interpretations of Alice’s personality and background are varied, so we’ve been taking a relatively balanced approach. Don’t expect to see the stuttering, lovesick Alice that pervades most of the fandom or the cold, calculating Alice at the opposite end of the spectrum . We’re aiming towards making her a stronger, less two-dimensional character, rather than just slapping on a label like ‘tsundere’ and being done with it.

Like Reimu, Marisa has known Alice for a while now and they have worked well together in the past, the most recent example being the episode of Subterranean Animism. While they do have their differences, they get along relatively well. So while you can expect plenty of bickering and the occasional duel (usually Marisa’s fault), you won’t have to worry much about Alice turning into a yandere psychopath and try to murder Marisa without warning. Unless you do something incredibly stupid.